does anyone know of a really good lightwave tutorial? im trying to use it instead of autocad because its a little more 3d friendly in some ways. im just having a hard time getting my head around some of the concepts in the program.

Lightwave Tutorial Megasite

There you go mate. Everything you will ever need is there.

One more question actually is there a polyline counter in lightwave? all i can find is a polygon counter? and how do you get to it?

Thanks for your help skeeter

Polylines i think you mean spline lines. Just press w for statistics and then see splines and u will see polylines, points, polys and stuff. Also selectable with +/- to the left there.

Might be shift and w i think.

see i have no problem getting the polygon count (# of sides) as in for a cube its 6 but i should see a polyline count of 12 lines that make up that cube. Points are also there, its indicating 8 point which i know to be correct but no polyline count:(

i don't think that's right zahadoom.

if lines are part of an already counted polygon, counting them again as splines would throw out the overall point count as each poly would be counted twice.

i think...

I think im getting a head ache, darn cad well i guess ill have to just finish my ship and see how it goes

polys and splines are different, all you need to keep an eye on is the actual poly count. what scatter saids is correct, remember poly count is what counts, although with spline modeling you do generate a lot of vertices.

howdy guys. i know that what i'm about to ask is somewhat offtopic, but well, it's about lightwave.
i want to get my hands on this program, but i'm not sure of what version. could someone give me a hint on this?
i should add that i'm practically new to 3d modelling, in case this affects your suggestions

do a web search for the home page, there you`ll see the latest version.

7 or better.

is there any difference between Lightwave v8.0 and Lightwave v8.0 Discovery Edition? I can't find info about the last one in LW's hompage :S

Believe it or not I still model in Lightwave 5.6 with such results: http://www.trekmania.net/art/con_refit08.jpg, I wouldn't mind upgrading, but hey ho. I make do.

'Polyline' is not even a term I'm familiar with in Lightwave, but different progs often use different terminology. If you mean 'spline', just an 'intelligent curve', it's a whole different kettle of fish, and if you mean building a ship for Botf2 you definitely won't be needing splines!

nice model dafedz. very nice.

hey,
where do you get lightwave from?
and does it cost anything because i can't afford it at the moment and my parents don't have a credit card so any help would be apprecated

lightwave costs around 700 quid, try blender it`s free.